PROPER 18A2
SEPTEMBER 06, 2026
FR. JERRY THOMPSON
ST. JAMES’ CHURCH, FREMONT, NE
In our gospel reading, Jesus lays out a process for dealing with each other when we sin against one another in the church. That does happen on occasion!
Sometimes it’s rather dramatic. One church member telling lies about another church member. Or one church member having an adulterous relationship with someone else’s spouse, as happened with the pastor in the church in which I grew up. These things happen.
But usually it’s less dramatic; sin is often a lot more subtle. Not outright lying about another church member, but suggesting something that’s not true, pointing in that direction in order to plant suspicion and doubt. Or not taking someone seriously, not truly listening to them because, in your estimation, they’re not worth listening to, not worth the effort to take them seriously.
Our Lord Jesus, of course, takes seriously every child of God, and he listens to everyone because everyone is worth his life.
When someone in the church sins against you, says Jesus - or it’s your perception that they have - the first thing you do is go talk to the person by yourself. You don’t send an email in anger and self-righteousness And you don’t complain about the person to your best friend. You have a conversation first with Jesus, and then you have one with the person in question.
You sit down and you talk face to face, pointing out what you perceive as a fault.
That’s a hard thing to do. Jesus calls us to be brave with each other, courageous,
because we can trust in him more than I ourselves. He calls us to have the courage to talk to each other with love in our hearts. He calls us to be vulnerable, to lay ourselves open. He calls us to reveal our stomachs like a dog or a cat, trusting our neighbor at a time when we might not feel that we can.
Jesus also calls us to have the courage to admit when we have done wrong, when we have hurt one another, when we have sinned against each other. That admission is also a revealing of the stomach, as we make ourselves vulnerable as we admit our humanity at its most fragile.
Being courageous with each other is a very vulnerable thing to do. But sitting down face to face, talking about perceived conflict, can be very effective and very healing.
When I was in my first parish as a Rector, we moved to town and the following weekend
the youth sponsors held a gathering for me to meet the youth in the parish. Very nice, right?! And it was a very nice gathering!
However, the week before the gathering, one of the adult youth sponsors came to me
complaining about the other sponsor.
And then at that very nice gathering, the other sponsor pulled me aside to complain about the one who had complained to me earlier in the week!
I’m not fond of triangulation, and I believed in setting the tone for my tenure early on.
So I asked the two youth directors to meet together with me in order for us to talk. And we did – or I should say, they did. I mainly served as an observer, establishing a safe space for them to talk to each other. And they came to an understanding that evening
about how best to proceed in leadership of the youth ministry.
You can imagine that that meeting was a little uncomfortable, especially for those two women. I was asking them – or better put, Jesus was asking them as he asks us all –
to be open and vulnerable with each other, face to face, trusting that the Holy Spirit would hold them together in ways that they weren’t doing very well on their own.
It was a conversation that needed to occur, and they were courageous in entering into it.
That’s not exactly an example of sin, but it is an example of a time when two people
needed to talk and did talk, just like the call Jesus places on the people in our gospel this morning, one of whom has sinned against the other.
They lived into the desire to reach a place of reconciliation with each other through faithfulness to Jesus, rather than living into the division created by not being faithful,
by not trusting Jesus, a division which sin always wants to foster.
We have to want reconciliation enough to live into discomfort, to be courageous in the face of that discomfort, and to listen to one another with the open and loving heart of Jesus, trusting in the Holy Spirit moving among us, drawing us together rather than apart, leading us in ways that our own perceptions alone never can, because we are not God.
Miraculous things – unanticipated things – can happen when all parties in a conversation
are seeking to live into God’s presence and will for communion, and when all parties have opened their hearts to the Holy Spirit, rather than trying to justify themselves and their own actions.
Jesus’ next instruction talks about what to do if reconciliation doesn’t occur with just the two of you – he actually says “if you’re not listened to,” which is telling. In order to truly know another person’s heart, we need to prioritize listening to them.
We need to talk at the level of the heart and the soul.
We need to talk the same level where we talk with Jesus.
If reconciliation fails between the two of you, says Jesus, then bring along a couple of others. That will help to keep you both honest and help keep tempers to a low boil. No fistfights among church members, among people who are called to love each other!
However, Jesus knows our human hearts well. He knows how obstinate his followers can sometimes be. “If the offender refuses to listen “to those who have accompanied you,” he says - if reconciliation still isn’t achieved - then, go to the entire community with your situation.
Take the conflict to the church. To the entire community, who can say to the offender,
“you are not acting the way followers of Jesus act – “first, in what you initially did, “and then in the way you’re refusing to listen to your brother or sister.”
You’re not acting the way followers of Jesus act – with each other, let alone with others beyond the community. After all, what we do among ourselves is simply practice for how we love the rest of the world.
But what if, after the situation is taken to the church as a whole, the offender still refuses to act in a faithful way? Well, says Jesus, treat them like a Gentile or a tax collector. Treat them as you would someone outside the community of faith.
Now this instruction from Jesus is telling. On the one hand, he draws a distinction
between his followers and those who are not striving to follow him, between those within the community of faith and those outside of it. He’s expecting a difference in behavior to be evident among his followers.
“Treat them as Gentiles and tax collectors.” How does Jesus himself act toward Gentiles and tax collectors? Well, he eats with them, unlike some of the other religious leaders.
And he serves them, for example by healing them. And he even calls Matthew, a tax collector, to join him along his way – which Matthew of course does.
In other words, Jesus loves them, all the while inviting them into the community of his followers by his words and by his actions. He’s inviting them into a saving relationship with him and our Father, a relationship that gets lived out day in and day out among those who follow him.
That’s finally how Jesus calls us to treat someone who has sinned against us. With love and, by that love, with invitation into a saving relationship with God. A relationship in which people place one another before differences, and the assumption of forgiveness waiting to be received even before repentance has occurred.
That’s precisely how Jesus acts with each of us when we have sinned against him. We can confess our sins before him, trusting in his mercy when our hearts are truly repentant
and we desire to change our lives, when we promise to change not only our behavior
but also our hearts.
As we prayed a few minutes ago, “Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts;
“for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, “so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy . . . “
It’s the same mercy we are called to have ready for one another at a moment’s notice
when we repent of our sin toward each other, when we seek deeper communion with each other. rather than further division.
May it always be so within the Christian community.
Amen.